


secrets spoken in empty rooms

by Fictropes



Series: 25 fics advent [13]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression mentions, Established Relationship, Introspection, M/M, Once again back on my richard siken bullshit, apart from this time Phil is getting his POV instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28049634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fictropes/pseuds/Fictropes
Summary: So he wants to be the same, but he wants Dan more.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: 25 fics advent [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022262
Comments: 13
Kudos: 49





	secrets spoken in empty rooms

**Author's Note:**

> oh hello welcome to i have spent another sunday reading richard siken and now phil is getting the fake intellectual bullshit treatment :)

Phil never thought you could reach out and hold love, until he wrapped his arms around Dan. 

He’s very real, very much in Phil’s space and— tangible.

He’s a tangible human being filled with something _intangible,_ something that Phil shouldn’t be able to grasp in his hands. But Dan makes it different, Dan makes love visible. It’s no longer hidden just out of view, somewhere Phil can’t find, instead it’s stood right here in front of him— asking to be found. 

Phil finds it willingly, claims it for himself in a way that people might find selfish. How was it Phil’s to claim? Why should it be Phil who gets to feel all that Dan can give? But for once he thinks he’s allowed to do something for him, and just for him. He remembers thinking he’d pay it ahead one day, give the love to someone else—but it’s been eleven years, and he’s still grasping it just as tightly. 

Dan has never once properly slipped out of his hold, has instead made a home for himself beneath Phil’s skin. Sometimes he think they’re the same person, that to be this close can only mean you eventually morph into one—they always had been two halves of something whole. 

Then something will happen, something like Dan will smile and Phil finds himself hoping that they are different. To be the same would be to not see this, to not see Dan. To not see him grow, transform, become him but _bigger_ —louder.

So he wants to be the same, but he wants Dan more. 

Dan who is bouncing off the walls, Dan who is crying in the kitchen, Dan who is buried beneath his covers asking for something Phil had already given him. His heart was ripped out of his chest and placed into Dan’s hands a long, long time ago. An odd sight to see on a train station platform in the middle of Manchester. 

Because Dan gets like this sometimes, convinces himself that Phil’s love is far away— _non-existent_ —undeserved. Phil has to turn Dan’s hands over, point to where his heart lays in his palms— where it’s always been. Sometimes it works. Sometimes Dan falls back into their usual routine of touches in the hallway, off lingering looks in rooms where other people exist, of speaking in a language only the two of them can understand.

Sometimes it takes more, Phil has to give more. He has to hand over all his other organs.

And sometimes Phil can’t do anything at all. Anything but lay there beside him and try not to get frustrated that Dan doesn’t _understand—_ get that his heart is no longer his own, hasn’t been since 2009. Because love is love and love is hard, sometimes. 

Dan hasn’t ever properly slipped away, but he’d gotten pretty far once. 

They fall back into place, eventually. With soft words, with soft mouths, with soft promises of trying to do better—to learn. 

But it’ll happen again one day, they accepted that a long time ago, sat at the bottom of a garden that didn’t belong to them—knowing love wasn’t always going to be perfect. Dan took Phil’s hand and told him that sometimes he’d be someone Phil maybe wouldn’t understand. Phil held on, told Dan that was fine—love can be like that. 

And it is, like that— but it’s still fine. The love is still visible even when Dan is trying his very hardest not to see. Phil can still reach out and touch what Dan feels towards him, can still photograph it and store it away to look at the next time this happens. 

It’s in the way Dan looks at him a little too fondly, stares at Phil like he hung all the stars in the sky, when really all he put up there was his own longing desperation to be loved. A beacon call that Dan answered with pretty words, with big hands cupping his jaw. 

It’s not always a perfect movie representation. It’s messy, it’s long talks about too serious things, it’s holding each other through the worst just so they can get to the best. It works, it’s them, it’s the tried and true formula of how Dan and Phil love each other. 

And it’s rare, honestly, the good outweighs the bad and the bad isn’t even the worst anymore. And it’s unfair to say it’s always Dan, because it isn’t. Phil has moments of difficult, of sitting in a fantasy world with his hands over his ears, eyes screwed shut— refusing to register reality. 

Dan tries to drag up back up to the real world, from the bottom step where Phil is sat _pretending._ But sometimes Phil is heavy, limp, forces his body to be too much for Dan to handle alone. And that’s when it’s his turn to realise Dan has always treated his heart with care, and he doesn’t have to go through this alone just because his own brain likes to tell him so. 

They meet in a well-lit hallway, they’re back to them at their best—not that their worst was ever bad. 

Dan will smile. Phil will smile back. They both know.

It’s love, that’s all Phil understands, trying to learn the ins and outs would take a lifetime. And the only lifetime he wants is a lifetime with Dan. So he’ll forgo the the details, take all that’s visible and clutch onto that. Treat it like something that should be treasured, because it should. Because finding something like this isn’t an everyday thing. It’s work, it’s communication, it’s secrets spoken in empty rooms—hushed words in the darkness. 

It’s being in love, and love is just as easy as it is hard. It’s an awful lot like falling— Dan ripped the rug out from beneath his feet eleven years ago and he hasn’t hit the ground since. 

**Author's Note:**

> [if u wanna rebloggy on tumblr, i always appreciate it!:)](https://fictropes.tumblr.com/post/637404415233490944/secrets-spoken-in-empty-rooms-complete-987-so)
> 
> er,,, m anyways, as always plz lemme know your thoughts ;_;


End file.
